Anyway, I left off attachments since the LAM is used both day and night. However, I can see that while this quick fix is good enough for the base 1.13, it isn't going to be detailed enough for other mods. There are some items that should be used at night only and some in the day only, but they may or may not provide a night/day visionrangebonus.

Lesh, your idea will take this game to the next level. We could even have insurgencies with that kind of grouping--anarchists who supposedly hate all forms of authority (except their own) and will masquerade as militia until they get their hands on the hardware necessary to **** up the whole plan. I was wondering, though, would the different factions have different outfits? Cops in blue, hunters in brown or camo, gangs looking like townspeople, anarchists in black/grey, etc.? Scorpion seems to have touched on this, but the syntax of his remarks has me wondering if he means the same thing...? :whoknows:

it wasn't a problem in xcom because you could only see 1 story at a time. could probably make it a toggle like show/hide treetops. we could also use wireframe mode for the alternate levels

and it doesn't always have to be building levels. the entire map is basically flat ground right now. wouldn't it be nice to have hilly and rolling terrain? first rule of combat is always to hold the high ground. right now we only have rooftops

i suggest another externalization :
VISUAL_DISTANCE_DECREASE_PER_RAIN_INTENSITY
should be splitted into a day and a night value.
AI is very very poor when rain is falling during the night because of bad visual distance.
that would help to make the AI working better at night.
btw - these variables should be placed in the weather section of the ini, too.

Hmm, interesting. Someone also pointed out that mercs get a Morale increase/decrease depending on the outcome of battles involving Militia, even rovers. The last Ironman game I played (before my current one) saw my reputation at AIM destroyed by failing to save dying Militia after a battle, when my mercs were in the same sector. This happened about five times, and the last incident saw me unable to hire even Bull. Externalizing Militia roles would be cool, so that you could affect the types of Militia trained based on the merc used to train them, (i.e. Len would train more Auto. Weapons users, Thor would train more Medics, etc.). :thinkerg:

if you can't give medical aid to militia after a battle has finished, then you can simply go to strategic map (don't compress time) load any different map (go to tactical view of a different sector than the one you just had a battle) go back to strategic map, reload the sector with recent battle and all militia and NPC (except fro prof.dat controlled ones) will be reset to full health

It's cool scorp. I'm the furthest thing from an 'off-topic' Nazi. But what do you do if all of your mercs are in that same sector? There's no way to load a different map, AFAIK, in that situation. Also, have militia options been externalized, or is that still the exclusive province of the coders?

something i posted in another thread that's prone to getting forgotten though:

weapon type names. maybe even other ASC11 lines from the exe that can be of use once externalised

this might be most useful for weapon mods that make big change in the terms of weaponry used (zombie, bow and sword mods and such)

the coolest thing here would be to be able to add new weapon categories, for instance some machine guns are not really "light machine guns" anymore, thus GPMG would be a new weapon class. same with Dedicated marksman rifles being separated from the "sniper" rifles. Uh, and "Carbine" or "compact AR" might be cool additions too. (PDW as well)

exactly, any remarkably different mod setting would greatly benefit of these things

other text from the exe, like "oppopnent's turn" or such would be, depending on setting, cool to be altered (me thinks of, say, a ww2 mod with axis versus allies or said zombie/ cross bow, sci-fi mods)

something else to externalise:

number of attachemntslots per item. i know it has been requested often enough, and i remember that it's improbable that the number of 4 can be raised. on the other hand, would it be possible to define if an item can have 0-4 attachmentslots as a start? this would be used to balance cheap versus expensive/ modern/ hitech guns for instance.

Hiho
my "wish-list" of possible externalisations with short comments/explanations.

1.map related stuff

a) Starting sector (already mentioned by Muggsy)
b) Time of arrival (thats just one offset in the exe -should be a real easy thing-if I remember right time counts from 01:00 pm in seconds.
c) Sam sites and their range
d)externalisation of bloodcat-ambush sectors- as long as those pets are around its hard to "leave arulco" with a mods storyline

2. trigger/flag related
a)adding a time trigger would give more control to modders than the progress trigger/flags
afaik the e-mail from enrico check progress vs game time...more control would be nice here too
b)possibility to deactivate e-mails,cutscenes,aim,merc,bobby ray....and to trigger/activate them by time or progress or npc script or by trigger which is like a mine in a map

3.Drug-control
a) abilty to control effect in detail/affected stats and duration (I liked the effect of drugs in FO -positive AND negative effects)
b) is there already a built in counter - how often reg/energy booster were used? if so- would be nice if a modder had the possibility to determine what effects happen if the 4th reg booster was consumed by a merc in 24h....example -which stats get reduced by which (random?)value....or the "Larry-effect"

4.Prof.dat
-aim/merc/npc
-factions
-"Nails-effect" would be nice if mercs personal weapon/equippment could not be stripped off them.

5.Ap's
with the amount of guns which made it into the game, quadrupling the ap's and movement costs like Kaiden mentioned it a time ago would make finetuning a much easier task.
Would be nice in externalised form too...so everyone could tweak it as he likes

ok...I know that some things mentioned are a bit over the top....but hey folks.....Christmas is near and I did not write a wishlist for Santa

number of admin, red shirt, elites that are by default present in a sector at the beginning of the game. Maybe even by difficulty level, also there might be other important values like how low/ high the chance is that this garrison leaves it's sector. i've had it in 1.13 that some formerly occupied sectors get nearly emptied of soldiers because they reinforce neighboring sectors. i guess that would have to do with enemy alertedness

i guess there'd be more to garrisons than that, but this i would have to know first

i don't know to which xml that would fit, so maybe a new xml would have to be made?

patrol routes are something entirely different i assume, but there's a table somewhere so i might be doable to externalise it without too much hassle.

Patrol routes are a good thing as are all those requests by scorpion and bonechucker (bone you really hit the nail on the head with some of those).

A Quests.xml is at the very top of my Christmas list for this year (since Santa has been so good to us last year). With this we could finally have a more exacting way to alter quests. The existing method is way better than nothing but requires so much experimentation and trial and error it really hamstrings anyone trying to make huge changes in quests. Noone wants to work for months on a Quest routine only to find out that it breaks something else about the game when he gets around to really being able to playtest his work. More importantly, the existing method is very hard to decipher so very few people even try for remarkable changes in quests. We end up always having a thinly altered Alruco campaign in just about every mod there is. This is hardly the modders fault for reasons already explained but if we really want to have a lot more new ideas come into play the NPC scripting and general quest structure has to be made far less nebulous.

Having alternate secors able to switch back and forth would also be very cool to illustrate (for instance) a town being destroyed then rebuilt. But having multiple choices for alternate sectors and a way to externalise which conditions trigger their appearance would be golden.

Being able to assign weapons based on whether the enemy is a yellow, red or blackshirt would allow modders to use these different enemy types as allied armies and just be a cool thing to be able to tweak.

For instance, in a WW2 mod you might use the yellow shirts as conscript armies (Vichy or Commando Supremo) and it would be very cool to be able to have their gear reflect their nationality.

Well, they are all maybe lofty requests but I have a lot of faith in the abilities of the coders to make things happen mainly because all of the very cool things they've already done that seemed just a year or so ago to be fringe requests.

Originally posted by Khor1255:
Being able to assign weapons based on whether the enemy is a yellow, red or blackshirt would allow modders to use these different enemy types as llied armies and just be a cool thing to be able to tweak.

For instance, in a WW2 mod you might use the yellow shirts as conscript armies (Vichy or Commando Supremo) and it would be very cool to be able to have their gear reflect their nationality.

This idea from Khor would greatly enhance modding and gamebalancing options !

The example givven by Khor is a nice idea-not only for mods -
even for the basic 1.13 this would be a powerfull tool to improve gamebalance.

We already have the "enemy gun choices-xml" they only need to be expanded to differentiate between yellow,red and blackshirts.

while xy is the value that can be entered. Would allow to play around with legs becoming a more valuable target (i know it's unrealistic, i know legs are hard to hit... that's not what it's about here) or headshot made harder/ easier

i think using that in conjunction with the option to restrict/ not restrict more accurate aiming to rifles could help playing around with the sniping balance too.

basically, having all the Emails as .txt or .xml files completely alterable. Having a xml file with a list of possible email triggers, that also states whether or not an email is sent out and what email is sent out.

The ability to set triggers for alternate sectors would go a long way toward creating new storylines and quests.

I would definately like a Quests.xml but even if that is an unrealistic goal at least having alternate sectors triggers being controlable by modders would be the next best thing and a great addition to the existing structure.

externalisation request: Email header. Enrico's name for instance is hardcoded in the exe. I don't mean the part tht can be edited through email.edt, i mean just the header.

now what i might have to do at one place is to hack new names into the exe (used to do that in version previous to 1.13) but if somebody was so nice to drop these lines out of the exe, that would make it easier to create new storylines for mods.